Northern Prairie gets boost from funding

Article taken from The Jamestown Sun, Thursday, April 6, 2000

The study of prairie grasslands has just received a strong boost from Congress with $600,000 in funding to Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center near Jamestown. The appropriation was heavily supported by North Dakota's congressional delegation.

“It's one of the first times grasslands has been named as a major area of attention and funding,” said Ron Kirby, director of the center. “Grasslands has not received much attention as an ecosystem. This is one of the first times it's been in a bill.”

Northern Prairie has been at the forefront of grassland research for nearly 35 years. Its research mission is to combine agriculture with habitats for wildlife. The funding will make it possible for the center to hire a botanist and seven seasonal employees to study grassland and wildlife ecology.

“This bill is focused largely on wildlife and its grassland habitat,” said Dave Fellows, special assistant to the director and a biologist at the center.

One study involves grassland birds in tallgrass prairies, the kind that grew higher than pioneer children. Tallgrass prairies are the most endangered type of grasslands and that means the birds who will only breed in tallgrass are in danger too.

“Tallgrass prairie depends on the amount of rainfall,” Kirby said. “The further west you go the shorter the grass gets. There is tallgrass prairie at the Sheyenne Grasslands near Lisbon.”

Northern Prairie's area of grassland study is from Minnesota to the Rockies and from the Canadian line through Texas. It's one of 16 wildlife research centers in the United States and the only one in this part of the country.

Another study will evaluate quality bird habitats surrounded with neutral habitats like small-grain fields and isolated from hostile habitats. The underlying hypothesis of the study is that large core areas of quality habitat will result in reproductive rates that will maintain population levels of breeding birds.

“We're integrating wildlife concerns with ag concerns,” Kirby said. “We need to be very efficient about what we have and managing both.”

The study of grasslands as a habitat for wildlife came out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which started in 1985. At the time, CRP focused mostly on preventing erosion and taking farm land out of production, not on providing for wildlife.

“Originally, they wanted to take erodible land out of production,” Kirby said. “Farmers planted grasses as a cover to stop erosion. Now there are areas that look more like the prairie of 120 years ago.”

It turned out that CRP land also began to attract birds and other wildlife back into the more natural habitat and provided a wealth of information for wildlife researchers.

“CRP is doing extraordinary things for wildlife,” Fellows said. “They're excellent for migrating birds and, with the high water levels we've been having, its also good for waterfowl.”

Still another area Northern Prairie will be able to study more with its added funding is the cowbird and its nest-destroying effect on bird populations. Unlike other birds, Kirby says, the cowbird likes what agriculture produces — things like feed lots and fields. It also is a nest parasite, which means it steals the nest of another bird and kicks the eggs out to lay its own.

“Our question is: can we manipulate the habitat to help it benefit preferred grassland species rather than the cowbird,” Fellows said.

Pothole ecology is another part of the ecosystem study Northern Prairie will be working on with the funding. The effect of agriculture on wetlands and its wildlife is and ongoing study at the research center.

The center partners with many different organizations and agencies in researching the needed balance between agriculture and ecology. Along with CRP lands restoring the prairie grasslands, 10,000 acres of wetlands have been restored in the Prairie Pothole Region. And Kirby and Fellows believe interest is continuing to grow in restoring natural wildlife habitats.

“Some people are looking at their land and remembering what it used to look like and wanting it to look like that again,” Fellows said. And Kirby added, “I believe that when people can, they have an interest in taking care of the land - in being good stewards of the land. People will do an enormous amount for wildlife if it doesn't cost very much so we can try to make information available on what landowners can do.”